Have you looked into Purely mail? This is what I use for my custom email needs. I don’t remember all the pros and cons, but the big one that scares most people off is it’s run by one guy. So if something happens to him, you’re potentially SOL. You could probably migrate to a new service, but could potentially be a huge pain.

I volunteered as tribute to be one of these ‘Friends’

Didn’t Facebook build infrastructure and give out free phones in India and other developing nations to get them online? I’m sure it was more to harvest their data, but I’m sure that counts pretty solidly for them